LATVIA is in danger of producing more news than it can comfortably consume. This week's print edition carries a brief analysis of the latest shenanigans, in which President Valdis Zatlers has called a referendum on the dissolution of the Saeima (Parliament) in protest at its vote to block an investigation by KNAB, the country's anti-corruption agency, of the three most powerful oligarchs (tycoons). I wrote a rather longer piece here in European Voice on the same topic.^*

But both pieces went to press too late for Thursday afternoon's news of Mr Zatlers defeat in the presidential contest (held by the current Saeima), which has elected Andris Bērziņš as the new president by a 53-44 vote. Anti-corruption protestors greeted this with a demonstration outside parliament. The previous president, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, said [link in Latvian] that the country was heading back to the era of dependence on oligarchs. It was greeted with gloom in neighbouring Estonia too. 

The good news is that Latvia's financial position is no longer precarious, so the political crisis is containable (Citadele, which used to be the troubled Parex bank, has just retired €200m in eurobonds--link in Latvian).

But the stage is set for a long messy summer. Mr Zatlers is president until July 7th. On July 8th Mr Bērziņš is sworn in. The referendum on dissolving parliament will be on July 23rd. If that passes, then a general election will take place in September. The best coverage of all this comes from www.ir.lv, unfortunately only in Latvian. However google translate gives a surprisingly good rendering of the main points. 

^*I am actually on book leave so I apologise if postings to this blog are scantier than usual. I've also removed an anonymous quotation about a "failed state" which on balance I think is overly alarmist.

Mr Mladic was indicted almost 16 years ago but serious efforts to catch him only began in 2008 after President Boris Tadic's Democratic Party took control of the government and the country's intelligence services. Mr Dacic said the intelligence agencies and police mistakenly focused on Mr Mladic's support network which since then had crumbled away. They found a sick old man living a reclusive life in a village in a house owned by his family. When they raided the house the police asked him who he was. Mr Mladic replied, "I can only praise you. You've found the one you wanted."

Serbia's war-crimes court has decided that Mr Mladic well enough to be extradited to The Hague but his lawyer will mount an appeal. Now the government's attention has turned back to its long-hoped-for EU membership. For months Mr Tadic and the government have had one aim: securing EU candidate status for Serbia in December, off the back of which it hopes to call elections early next year. Serbian officials and Mr Fule would like to accelerate the country's EU accession process by also giving it a date to open accession talks when it is granted candidate status. Unless they got dates too, that would mean that Serbia would leapfrog Macedonia and Montenegro, which both have candidate status but no date. 

According to Mr Fule, Mr Mladic's arrest is "the spark" needed to revive the process, both for Serbia and the EU. The Balkan states have suffered from apathy in terms of accession while many member states have suffered from enlargement fatigue. "I hope the unfolding events will make those irrelevant."

But while the Serbs believe they can get candidate status, a date to start talks seems overambitious. Mr Mladic was one obstacle, say EU sources. Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is another. In March Serbia and Kosovo began EU-sponsored talks. The atmosphere has been good, but no agreements have been made. A deal needs to be struck to avoid "another Cyprus", says one diplomat; talking is fine, but they have to give the impression that one day a solution might be found. 

This morning feels like something of an anti-climax, says one Serbian government official. Milica Delevic, who is in charge of the Serbian government's EU integration office is elated but realistic about the future. Capturing Mr Mladic is not a "a joker which will cover everything." Serbia still has a lot to do, she sighs. The EU has to be ready for enlargelyment, too, she continues, pointing to the euro-zone's problems and discussions about the EU borderless Schengen.

In Belgrade, kiosks are piled high with papers crammed with details about Mr Mladic's arrest, but they are selling no faster than normal. People are tired of an old story that should have ended years ago. As Mr Dacic says hopefully, "Mladic is already in the past." Chants rang out on Friday morning from youths, not angry about Mr Mladic's arrest, but happy to be finishing school. They care little about a man who was indicted when they were mere babes.

Mr Mladic was indicted by the UN war-crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1995. The charge sheet included genocide. This was because of his alleged role in organising the murder of 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. In 2001 General Radoslav Krstic, Mr Mladic’s subordinate, was convicted of genocide for his role at Srebrenica.

Soon after his indictment Mr Mladic disappeared. Up to a point. He was spotted at football games, and it was known where he lived in Belgrade. After the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, in 2000, Mr Mladic was no longer seen; but he was still protected by elements of the security services and the army. The new government, led by Zoran Djindjic, made a decision: it was too dangerous to tackle Mr Mladic and his protectors. Yet in 2003 Mr Djindjic was murdered. Ostensibly the killing was connected to organised crime—but those circles most probably overlapped with elements in the security services who were protecting Mr Mladic.

In 2008 the incoming government, led by the party of Serbia’s president, Boris Tadic, arrested Radovan Karadzic, the wartime president of the Bosnian Serbs. There seemed no obstacle to arresting Mr Mladic, but by that time the authorities appeared to have lost track of him.

Serbia’s failure to arrest Mr Mladic has badly slowed the country’s European Union accession process. The Netherlands especially, whose troops were in Srebrenica in 1995, has fought to make Serbia’s EU integration dependent on his capture. Now that he has been caught, a huge obstacle has been removed and Serbia could bound ahead. Polls show that most Serbs oppose extraditions to The Hague, where Mr Milosevic died in jail in 2006, but many also resent the way that Mr Mladic, and Mr Karadzic before him, slowed the rehabilitation of Serbia.

War crimes, and facing the past, are still controversial across the former Yugoslavia. The recent conviction by the war-crimes tribunal of two Croatian generals stirred anger in Croatia. In Bosnia Milorad Dodik, the president of the Republika Srpska, the Serb-run half of the country, provoked a crisis by claiming Serbs were being prosecuted more harshly than Bosniaks. It remains to be seen how the arrest of Mr Mladic will play in Bosnia and Serbia. One happy person is Milica Delevic, who oversees Serbia’s EU integration. The arrest will establish trust, she says, and means that “we’ll see the other process through.” Amen.

On May 24th the sentence did come into force. Mr Khodorkovsky lost his appeal, Mr Medvedev lost his excuse, and Russia lost another chance to modernise itself. Few had expected anything else; a successful appeal would have meant changing a political system held together by corruption and the rule of politics over law. Mr Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 and the destruction of his oil company, Yukos, set Russia on its current course. Like much else in this case, the appeal symbolised Russian justice today.

The absurdity of the second conviction seemed to contradict the first. Having already served almost eight years in prison for underpaying taxes on sales of Yukos’s oil, Mr Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev (pictured), face another five years inside for stealing that same oil from Yukos.

“In what dusty cellars did they dig up the poisonous Stalinist spider who wrote this drivel?” asked Mr Khodorkovsky. Western leaders condemned the verdict and Amnesty International declared the two men prisoners of conscience, describing their trial as “deeply flawed and politically motivated.”

The Kremlin is immune to such statements. It may be more sensitive to legislative proposals from 15 American senators to apply asset freezes and travel bans to Russian officials involved in the killings and abuse of human-rights activists and journalists. The bill was prompted by the murder of Sergei Magnitsky—a corporate lawyer driven to death in Russian detention in 2009 by police officers whom he had accused of corruption—and bears his name. But its application would be far wider.

Vladimir Usov, the judge, shaved a year from Mr Khodorkovsky’s and Mr Lebedev’s sentence. But as Mr Khodorkovsky told him: “Cosmetic [changes] will look stupid. You can either overturn this verdict... or join the criminals who spit at the law.” Two days later Mr Khodorkovsky’s cellmate said he had been ordered to stab him in 2006.

Russian legal experts have yet to give their assessment of the second trial. But ultimately, Mr Khodorkovsky argued, Mr Medvedev will have to decide what he cares about more: “the rule of law or the opportunity for extrajudicial reprisals”. The statement seemed rhetorical. The appeal had been due to take place a week earlier but was postponed so as not to clash with a press conference by Mr Medvedev, the message of which was that the president had neither the will nor the intention to change a model that has evolved under his predecessor, patron and likely successor, Vladimir Putin.

The outstanding bilateral issues are a series of trivial irritants: some grumbles about restitution for Holocaust victims' families on one side, continued complaints about the existence of a visa regime on the other. 

Yet behind the headlines the mood is shifting. Warsaw these days seems a lot closer to Brussels and Berlin than it does to Washington, DC. America is in the unusual position of fanning the embers of Polish atlanticism, rather than trying to dodge their heated expectations. One reason is commercial. Poland did not gain the contracts it was expecting in post-war Iraq; nor has its aviation industry benefited from F-16 offset work to the extent that some hoped for. The success of the Polish economy in its trade with Germany makes America proportionately less important.

Another factor is personality. The Kaczyński twins (Lech the president, Jarosław the prime minister) were passionate, romantic Atlanticists, with sentiments fired by the cold war crucible in which America was the world's best hope of rolling back communism. (Their foreign policy was also marked by gaffes, misconceptions and intrigues, but that is another story).

Donald Tusk is a more sober and pragmatic figure, whose great achievement has been a rapprochement with Poland's most important neighbour, Germany. Where the Kaczyńskis saw America as a vital counterweight to a neighbourhood filled with historical threats, Mr Tusk sees a benign environment in no urgent need of an outside balancing factor. The idea of a Washington-London-Warsaw axis has faded too. Britain (at least viewed from Warsaw) seems a marginal force in Europe.

Meanwhile Poland is learning to play the European game at a high level. America matters here: on Belarus, on Libya, on the Western Balkans. Mr Obama and his team will have plenty to talk about in Warsaw. But on none of these issues are American views decisive, in the way they would have been, say, a decade ago. It may be that Washington needs Warsaw more than the other way round. That has not been the case since the days of Tadeusz Kościuszko, the great Polish warrior of the War of Independence. As Mr Obama may well mention on his visit, that great Pole left all his property to the cause of black emancipation.

ULADZIMIR NYAKLYAEV looked triumphant as he stepped out of the Frunzenskiy district court in Minsk earlier today. In most countries receiving a two-year suspended prison sentence would be no cause for celebration. But the man widely regarded as the opposition front-runner in Belarus's flawed presidential vote in December had expected worse (prosecutors had requested three years); he certainly got off lightly compared to Andrei Sannikov, another leading opposition figure. Last Saturday Mr Sannikov was sentenced to five years in a tough penal colony.

A third presidential candidate, Vitaly Rimasheusky, was given two years' probation today. Two more candidates were due to be sentenced, but saw their hearings postponed, apparently because the judge was ill.

All the defendants were accused of orchestrating "mass disturbances"—meaning the 20,000-strong opposition rally in Minsk on election night that ended with a brutal crackdown. Speaking outside the court today, Mr Nyaklyaev evoked the "shock" of that night, when he was badly beaten, but also described it as a "moral victory" over Alyaksandr Lukashenka's dictatorship.

Yet the size of the crowd today showed how successful Mr Lukashenka's regime has been in cowing the opposition. Barely 150 people were there to listen to Mr Nyaklyaev; many of them were journalists. Belarus has not seen anything that could be called an opposition rally since that freezing December night.

The ongoing trials, combined with threatening words from Mr Lukashenka following a mysterious bombing on the Minsk metro in mid-April, have stifled dissent, even as a severe economic crisis and a nosediving currency give Belarusians a lot more to complain about than a few months ago.

While Minsk retains its orderly, prosperous aura, the talk everywhere is of prices: the cost of imported goods—those that are still available—from sugar to shampoo, is doubling, tripling even, from week to week. Multiple exchange rates are in operation: on Friday evening the interbank rate stood at around 7,500 roubles to the dollar, while bureaux de change were still required to sell dollars for 4,500 roubles, meaning, of course, that they had barely any. Belarusians are closing their bank accounts, stocking up on non-perishables, and joining endless queues outside those bureaux.

At the central station in Minsk there is some hope that naive foreigners will trade in their hard currency for favourable rates on arrival. Locals waiting in line keep a notebook detailing their names and place in the queue, returning to check every now and then. Asked who is to blame for this situation, they giggle. One says sarcastically: "I'm no expert, but in my humble opinion, the Belarusian economy has not been managed entirely correctly." They do, however, express confidence that a bail-out from Russia Mr Lukashenka has promised to secure would stabilise things.

But yesterday those hopes receded: Russia's finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, told reporters in Minsk that Belarus could get $3 billion in loans from the Eurasian Economic Community, a Russia-led regional grouping, over three years, but only if it privatised $7.5-9 billion in state-owned assets. The Kremlin clearly sees Belarus's woes as an opportunity to get its hands on the country's key industries.

Yet Mr Lukashenka may refuse to give Moscow what it wants. Talks with Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, in Minsk last night ended, unexpectedly, with no statement to the press. "Nothing to brag about", was today's headline in Nasha Niva, an opposition newspaper.

Leonid Zlotnikov, an economist, fears Mr Lukashenka cares more about not ceding control of Belarus's oil refineries and gas pipelines to Russian firms than about maintaining Belarusians' living standards. The recent wave of repression has scuppered Minsk's chances of help from the West, but with the lid so firmly on dissent, Lukashenko may feel he can afford to play hardball with the Russians—and in the meantime let the economy slide.

Founded in 2008, the woman's-rights group is best known for for staging topless protests in the streets of Kiev, Ukraine's capital. Marching bare-breasted underneath banners with slogans such as "Ukraine is not a brothel," the women of Femen have organised protests against corruption, next year's European football championships (held jointly with Poland) and the sex-tourism industry in Ukraine. Women sporting high heels and little else have confronted riot police; lingerie-clad supporters have brought busy roads to a standstill by lying lifeless in the middle of them.

A slideshow of images of the topless activists ran on the website of German newsweekly Spiegel recently, unsurprisingly arousing much attention. A host of international news outlets followed up the story. Femen's shameless quest for exposure appeared to be working a treat.

But now that the group's provocative tactics have been transmitted beyond curious crowds in Ukraine's capital, the efficacy of their approach is being questioned. In March Facebook blocked Femen's fan page in accordance with their policy on obscene material, only to reinstate it shortly afterwards with no explanation. Later that month, Femen's near-naked attempt to honour the victims of the Japan earthquake with the catchy slogan, "Shake Boobs Not Earth" was widely seen as seriously ill-judged.

Yet there is, believe it or not, more to Femen than topless protest. A slick new online campaign titled Do You Want Me? juxtaposes highly sexual images with those of poverty, and extreme violence. A video at the site takes the viewer along a prostitute-laden dark street. You are confronted by a pimp who inquires about your gender preference. Ask for a girl, and you are shown a the first half of a provocative striptease by an attractive woman.

To see the rest, you are asked to activate your webcam. If you agree, Femen takes your photo. Then comes the twist. The words, “Thousands of people buying sex pay for violence,” appear on screen; the pimp seen earlier emerges from the shadows and assaults the woman. The final shot is the webcam photo of you beside a picture of the battered woman, and the tagline: “Always picture the consequences.” Photos of others who have participated are also displayed.

Femen's goal is to attract attention—and they have certainly done that. If the new online campaign is any indication, the group's more sophisticated methods should get them the right kind of publicity.

Femen's website is not yet properly functional, but you can see a photo gallery of pictures from the group's protests.

The next few days will tell whether cool heads prevail or if the country slips into serious unrest and, potentially, violence. This morning opposition supporters blocked the main Tirana to Durres highway, while protests broke out in Tirana and several other towns.

Much of the background to the election is in a piece I wrote on the day of the poll. I quoted Mr Rakipi comparing the race to run Tirana to the battle of Stalingrad. This quote is now looking rather prescient.

The immediate problem is that there was no clear victor on May 8th. The Socialists took most of Albania's major towns, but Tirana is in question. Such is the level of distrust in the system that the election count was televised. In Tirana 249,184 people voted; Mr Rama, who is running for a fourth term as mayor, won by just ten votes.

Yesterday the central election commission said there would be a recount it would count voting papers that had been inadvertently placed in the wrong ballot box. This has increased the chances of Lulzim Basha, the candidate of Mr Berisha’s ruling party, taking Tirana. The Socialists claim this is a ruse designed to deny them victory.

The confusion arose because in Tirana there were four ballot boxes, covering the mayoral vote as well as municipal councillors. Some ballot papers inevitably found their way into the wrong boxes. The question of whether they should be considered valid is ambiguous; there are strong arguments on both sides. "Nobody has the right to deny the will of the citizens that exercised their right to vote," says Mr Basha. It seems a reasonable point. On the other hand the electoral code and precedent seem clear: the votes should not be counted.

Albania has been paralysed since a general election in 2009 that the Socialists say was stolen by Mr Berisha. Unsurprisingly the latest development has triggered fury among their ranks. Mr Rama said: “We should do everything with body and soul to stop the government, and the revolt brewing inside every Albanian should spill into the streets.” Gramoz Ruci, a senior party official, said that the Socialists would lead a “popular revolt”.

I asked Erion Veliaj, Mr Rama’s right-hand man, whether a call for an uprising might not be a big risk. A Socialist-led demonstration in February January went seriously wrong when four people were killed by Republican Guards shooting from inside the government building. Mr Veliaj replied: "[After] forging the paperwork live on television [Mr Berisha] is about to now strip our title and declare his guy the winner in an attempt to throw Edi on the street. You tell me what we are supposed to do".

Huge pressure is being applied to both sides from abroad. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, appealed yesterday for "all political leaders…not to put lives of citizens at risk.” José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, has cancelled a planned visit to Tirana on Saturday. He presumably intended to congratulate Albanians on their election and to announce that the country’s stalled EU integration process was now back on track. So much for that. As one European diplomat sighed, “20 years after communism, they seem unable to hold elections which meet basic European criteria.”

This morning Mr Veliaj says that a legal appeal against the planned recount in Tirana will be mounted, but with protests and roadblocks under way, things already look dicey. If Mr Basha is declared the winner he will be hard to dislodge, regardless of any appeal—and the same goes for Mr Rama. 

As one source from Tirana wrote to me overnight: “It seems we are entering into a new cycle of political conflict.” What a tragedy for Albanians.

Entitled: "The forgotten conference", the letter urges Poland to pay more attention to the event. It bemoans the fact that Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski’s annual statement to Parliament in March 2011 did not mention the meeting and that climate-change issues are absent from Poland’s presidency priorities.

These omissions suggest that Poland is failing to take climate change seriously even as negotiations on the issue have moved far beyond the confines of environmental policy and now touch on global economic, social and political relations especially between the rich and less developed countries. The climate conference in Durban is where the negotiations will take place as to what is to happen once the Kyoto protocol runs its course requiring a new worldwide agreement on lowering CO₂ emissions. In Durban, Poland will be co-responsible for coordinating a common UE position on climate.

That may be a tad optimistic: much of the foreign-policy planning now stems from Brussels, rather than from the rotating presidency.

Still, it continues:

the Polish government appears to view proposals put forward by those who want to radically limit CO₂ emissions as a threat to our economy. But this approach itself marks a threat. Firstly, the EU’s Presidency role is to act as an arbiter in disputes between member states. The presidency should not take sides. Those responsible for the Polish presidency would do well to remember this. Secondly, the EU is concerned to play a leading role in the fight against climate change in Durban. Were Poland to take the role of a country which neglects the issue or indeed treats it as a threat to its well being and consequently acts as a brake on the proceedings then our position in the EU will suffer. Our presidency’s achievements in other fields will be dimmed.

The signatories are:

• Krzysztof Bobinski – President of Union&Poland Foundation;
• Malgorzata Bonikowska – Editor of THINKTANK Magazine; 
• Zbigniew Czachor – Director, Centre of European Research and Education; 
• Grzegorz Gromadzki – independent expert; 
• Jacek Kucharczyk - President of the Executive Board, The Institute of Public Affairs; 
• Bartek Nowak – Executive Director, Center for International Relations;
• Jan Pieklo – Director, Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation PAUCI; and
• Pawel Swieboda – President of demosEuropa-Centre for European Strategy

However Polish hopes of international legal pressure being brought to bear on Lithuania have been dashed by a recent court ruling. The European Court of Justice has been hearing a case brought by a Polish-Lithuanian couple. The wife, a Lithuanian-born ethnic Pole, wants her name to be Małgorzata Runiewicz rather than Malgožata Runevič. She also wants her marriage certificate changed to Małgorzata Runiewicz-Wardyn from Malgožata  Runevič-Vardyn (Lithuanian does not have the letter "w"). Her husband's name was registered on the marriage certificate as Lukasz Pawel Wardyn; he wants the Polish diacritical signs to be used, so that it would read. "Łukasz Paweł" The couple claim that the various spellings of their names on different documents is causing them inconvenience and contravene the EU's racial-equality principles. The judges reckoned otherwise, pointing out that it is quite normal for countries to disregard foreign diacritical marks and that the inconvenience suffered was not a matter to disturb the fundamental principles of freedom of movement inside the European Union. Many might think it does not deserve to disturb Polish-Lithuanian political relations either. 

All the more reason to welcome Radek Sikorski's visit to Benghazi, about which he (disclosure, a friend of mine) writes on the Project Syndicate website. He is the first Western foreign minister to visit the rebel-controlled bit of Libya. Though the upheaval there is violent and the collapse of Communism in Poland 22 years ago was peaceful, he sees similar dilemmas:

How should the former regime’s worst wrongdoers and security police, with their insidious archives, be treated? Should the former ruling party be banned? How can civilian, democratic control of the army and police be secured? What role should religion play in public affairs? Should the constitution establish a presidential or parliamentary system?

(Estonia's president Toomas Hendrik Ilves is thinking on similar lines, as I posted yesterday). Just as in 1989, finding a moral compass amid a time of whirling change is hard. Mr Sikorski's mission (a couple of weeks before President Barack Obama visits Warsaw) was to assess the rebel leadership. He writes:

Around the table sat improbable allies: some had been prominent officials in Qaddafi’s regime; others had spent many years in prison under sentence of death. They were united in recognising that their country deserved a new start. I was reminded of Poland’s “roundtable” in 1989, when Solidarity sat with the ruling communists to negotiate the end of the regime.

The message he brought his hosts was as follows:

I told them that we considered the TNC to be our new legitimate political interlocutors in Libya and were ready to support them, but that in return we expected the TNC to work towards the best standards of transparent democratic government. They had to realize that they need a plan – revolutionary moments are moments to be seized. Poland would help by offering training for TNC officials.

He also has two points to make to his European colleagues.

First, Libya’s TNC is the best bet we can make now for Libya’s future. Its leaders are cooperating in an effort to bring about real reform in a way that was unthinkable a few months ago. They deserve the world’s energetic support.

And

Second, while Europe has much to offer its North African neighbours in terms of financial support, advice, and training, the region needs to find its own path to freedom and success. Let us approach this task in the best spirit of European solidarity, but also with a certain humility. Europe’s former communist countries can make a special contribution to the process of transition across North Africa. Above all, we understand that sustained reform requires assuming responsibility by mobilising the energy of one’s own people, not relying on well-intentioned but often ill-focused outside help.

At home, critics characterise Mr Sikorski's foreign policy as "do-nothing", a charge which clearly rankles him: his Twitter feed (in Polish only) provides a series of sarcastic rebuttals. But deeds speak louder than words. This was a good one. 

Now the Russian authorities have responded by summoning Mr Browder to Moscow for questioning (last time he tried to go there, he was turned back from the airport on unspecified national-security grounds, perhaps related to his exposure of mismanagement in big Russian companies). His lawyer's response deserves a place in legal textbooks for the concentrated fury that seeps from every line. I can't excerpt it here because it is a pdf. But I do recommend readers to sit down with a cold vodka (or a warm beer if they're English) and read it in full. His opponents in Russia may wish to consider the idea that when you're in what looks like a hole, it may be a good time to stop digging.

• Libya: what are we in for?;
• EU Foreign Policy: Failing, Flailing or Finding Its Feet?;
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Russia's Multipolar Blues;
• Lostpolitik: Can Germany Rise to Its Leadership Challenge?; 
• Russia’s Leadership and 2012: Election, Selection or Ejection?; and 
• Europe's Energy Security: Geopolitics, Credibility and Corruption.

One of the highlights was a speech by the Estonian president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves (seen earlier sitting on the floor in a particularly packed session: name any other country where the head of state does that). 

The title was "Getting to Turkey or Aquaria from Fish Soup". The latter reference is to a famous quote sometimes attributed to Lech Wałęsa but actually from Adam Michnik. It was memorably used by Estonia's first post-1991 president, Lennart Meri, in his address to the UN in 1993. It is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, which is what Communism did to the countries on which it was imposed. It is rather harder to reverse the process.

The theme was reflections on the revolutions in North Africa from the point of view of one of the most successful ex-communist countries. Mr Ilves (Swedish-born and American-raised) is a former journalist, well-read with an acerbic turn of phrase. It was well on display in his speech. His launch-pad was a paraphrase of the opening line in Anna Karenina: "All successful post-despotic countries reformed alike.  Each unsuccessful country finds its own excuse.”  Successfully overthrowing a despotic regime is just the first step:

That was the quick, and deceptively often, the easy part.  Everything else that we consider to be the essence of creating a democracy: institution building, establishment of rule of law, development of civic society, fundamental rights and freedoms, economic growth, low corruption, turned out to take years and a lot of effort and political capital and will.

He continued with a sobering reminder of the limits of what is often seen wrongly as the triumph of 1989:

Plagued by corruption and kleptocratic rule, or subject to de-ideologised but still authoritarian despotism, it is a depressing empirical truth that most citizens of countries that escaped communist totalitarianism twenty years ago today remain under some kind of undemocratic rule. Indeed, of those 400 million (400 million!) people living in countries that comprised the audience of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, three quarters live today under rule rated by Freedom House as “Un-free” of “Partially free”.  While these citizens are arguably better off than a generation ago, they still live as subjects, not as free citizens.

And with this historical perspective:

Today, as the world watches fascinated—and in some cases, horrified—at popular rebellions against authoritarian rule in Northern Africa and in parts of the Arab world, what we here in the post-communist world sense first and foremost is déjā vu. We recognize ourselves just a generation ago.  The feeling of now or never, the sense that at long last there is a chance to throw off the stagnant and thuggish rule that has held us back or been on our back for decades.  An exhilaration at success, bewilderment at how weak tyranny turned out to be and how quickly the despotic clique that decades for decades had brutalized the citizenry collapsed, gave up or fled. To our democratic colleagues in Egypt and elsewhere, I would say: Cherish these emotions; they will be touchstones.

But the main thrust of the speech was not to advise the revolutionaries ("East Europeans" have plenty of experience with unwanted and often bad advice from outside). It was to lambast the prejudice that the secure, rich countries of the western half of the continent manifest towards the east and south alike. He drew a comparison with what Edward Said called "Orientalism": the idea that the Arab east is exotic and different, definitely backward and probably dangerous. He cited this comment, from a former president of the European Parliament on the eve of EU enlargement, as a prime example

The forthcoming enlargement is not comparable to any previous one. This is true not only–and not primarily–because of the immense gulf between the West and the potential East of the Union in terms of the standard of living. More important is that the citizens and the politicians of the Central and Eastern European countries differ fundamentally from those in the present EU Member States as regards their national emotional traditions, experiences, interests and value judgments. What needs to be overcome here is not only the legacy of 50 years of separate development but also far older and more fundamental differences rooted in European history. 

Mr Ilves was too polite to name names, but a quick bit of research suggests that the person concerned was Klaus Hansch (however I can't find the exact quote in English). He continued:

I could say that is one of the silliest, crypto-racist, indeed orientalist things I have encountered, except it is not. It’s just part of the narrative we in Central and Eastern Europe have endured for almost a quarter century, from „Lazy Latvians“ working for Laval in Sweden to „Polish Plumbers“ in Paris to Post-soviet, emotionally traumatized, hence foreign policy challenged Estonians right here in Tallinn. I mention all this to shame those that treated us that way, to chasten those of us who might behave the same way to others and to warn our democratic brethren in Northern Africa that even when you do your best, there will be those in Europe who don’t get it. As the Turks well know.

He concluded:

Those who inherited a functioning democracy without having to fight to create it don’t quite know what it means; those who had to build it do. I hope we who do know what it means are willing to work together with democrats in the Arab world to build their democracies. That we appreciate their sacrifices and now extend our hand to them… if we are asked.

I feel slightly sorry for whomever is asked to give next year's conference keynote. Mr Ilves has set a high bar.

BOSNIA is facing its worst crisis since the end of the war in 1995. Again. That is what Valentin Inzko, the international community’s high representative, told the UN Security Council on May 8^th. The International Crisis Group (ICG) recently said something similar. (Here, courtesy of Al Jazeera, is a useful summary [video] of the current crisis.) It is sometimes difficult to find new things to say about Bosnia's perpetual state of crisis. 

Luckily, I suppose, there is never a shortage of opinions. So here I have brought together a selection of some of the most recent arguments over the current crisis.

(First, though, a word of caution. Events are starting to move. Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, is travelling to Bosnia tonight in an attempt to broker a last-minute deal between the country's squabbling factions. Good luck, Cathy. You'll need it.)

First off is Nenad Pejic, a distinguished Bosnian journalist and author, and now an associate director of broadcasting at RFE/RL. In a recent piece of commentary he explains what he thinks needs to be done about the Bosnian impasse:

The key problem is the same: the aggressive behavior of Serbian nationalists. The solution, accordingly, must be sought in the same place: in Belgrade. Yet the experience of the 1990s also offers a path toward a potential solution.

He goes on to discuss the role of Milorad Dodik, the hardline president of the Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb part of Bosnia:

Dodik's popularity and his usefulness as a tool of the ultranationalists make him a potential threat to the current Serbian president, Boris Tadic. A Serbia that embraces Dodik, however, is likely to find its path to membership in the European Union blocked. So Tadic could soon find himself facing a choice between EU values and support for the Bosnian Serb leader.

As before, the hardliners in the other two ethnic groups are a secondary problem that can be easily solved once the core issue is dealt with.

All indications are that Tadic will opt for the EU. But he may need plenty of prodding from Europe and the rest of the international community—including the UN Security Council. So far, sadly, they have not shown themselves up to the task.

On May 2^nd Louise Arbour, head of the International Crisis Group, weighed in. In a three-page letter to senior EU figures, who were due to discuss Bosnia, she argued that although the country was indeed facing its worst crisis since 1995,

the international community must set its goals in Bosnia, calibrate them to a realistic appraisal of its diminished powers and, above all, extricate itself from its counterproductive entrapment in local politics.

A particularly controversial issue is the decision of the Republika Srpska's national assembly to call a referendum on whether the RS should withdraw from Bosnia’s state court and prosecutor’s office—a move widely seen as a dress rehearsal for a referendum on independence. Ms Arbour said that Mr Inzko should refrain from using his power to annul the assembly's decision:

not least because the attempts would likely be met with defiance and make a referendum campaign even more destablising. The European Union’s own inability to strengthen its delegation in Bosnia and to equip a new head with adequate authority and powers to vigorously and constructively direct international policy has contributed to the general deterioration.

Ms Arbour’s letter was met with loud applause from some quarters, and furious opprobrium in others. An example of the latter can be found on the blog of Daniel Serwer, an old Balkan hand now teaching at several Washington universities. Not only did Ms Arbour's letter not have the desired effect, he observes, but the EU’s Political and Security Committee was “deeply unsympathetic” to her views. Then he sticks the knife in:

The ICG letter contains a number of factually inaccurate claims. These claims not only paint a false picture of events on the ground, but are also used as the basis for subsequent recommendations.

We are then treated to a list of “blatant inaccuracies” and allegations that the ICG line has "consistently parroted RS policy since early 2009". Ms Arbour's letter, says Mr Serwer, "could have been written in Banja Luka" (the RS capital).

The ICG is not used to such harsh criticism. it will hit especially hard coming from Mr Serwer, a former diplomat who helped shape the Dayton accord that ended the Yugoslav wars and who knows anyone who is anyone in Balkan circles, both in the region and in Washington.

Finally (and this comes from Mr Serwer’s blog), there are the Serbian and Croatian views on Bosnia's crisis, as presented at the UN Security Council on Monday. Serbia first: 

We consider that the announced referendum of the citizens of Republika Srpska on the Court and the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has nothing to do with the territorial integrity of the country and is not in contravention of Dayton Peace Accords. Without any intention to interfere into the internal affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we consider that legislative initiative belongs only to competent assemblies formed by the legitimately elected representatives of citizens and that there are no powers on the basis of which it could be taken over by other governmental organs in Bosnia and Herzegovina or by the international presence.

In short: Mr Dodik has Belgrade's full support. And this is the view from Croatia:

[W]e echo previous speakers who have expressed serious concern regarding the unilateral decision by Republika Srpska to hold a referendum on challenging the authority of state judicial institutions and rejecting the authority and past decisions of the High Representative. We believe this decision should be reversed, as it undermines the constitutional structure of the country and could undo the positive developments achieved since the entry into force of the Dayton Peace Agreement. If the referendum moves forward, it may foster new tensions in the country and the region.

Meanwhile, earlier today Mr Dodik himself nudged an escape hatch open. Perhaps anticipating Ms Ashton’s visit he told the Serbian newspaper Blic that there was a chance the referendum could be called off:

If in the talks with Europe, we manage to secure a statement from a important and highly positioned official from the EU, who would say that our demands are justified and right, the referendum will lose its meaning because its goal is to reach a solution. However Europe behaves, and America, they will have to give answers to these questions because the reality in Bosnia is not compliant with the legal systems in Europe and America.

So there we are. Is this all more of the same, or does it mark a genuine deterioration? Watch this space.

(Finally, a gentle request. We do, of course, welcome comments. But we would appreciate it if participants could refrain from the death threats, hate speech, slander, generalised calls for murder, libel, rehashes of the second world war and so on that have appeared under some previous posts. Writers have feelings too.)

UPDATE Ms Ashton's trip appears to have scored a success. Mr Dodik has announced that the planned referendum on the Bosnian court will be cancelled. He says the EU's foreign-policy chief assured him that Bosnia's judicial arrangements would be reviewed.

A peaceful protest against a rigged presidential election last December ended in mass arrests of most presidential candidates and their supporters. Some of the women were released to house arrest. Most men stayed in jail. A conveyor belt of trials is now in motion. Andrei Sannikov, a former diplomat who contested Mr Lukashenka, is facing the most serious charge: organising public disorder. A 15 year-prison sentence could result. On May 11th, his wife, Irina Khalip, a journalist for Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper, was brought to court. She faces a three-year sentence. International observers, including those from Russia and Ukraine, have been kicked out.

The trials are a farce. Last month, on the first day of Mr Sannikov’s, 21 of 29 police witnesses took sick leave or went on holiday. One who turned up said he received a bruise on his backside and spent four days in hospital. But the sentences are no joke. One of Mr Sannikov’s aides, Dmitry Bondarenko, has already received two years.

The actual “disorder” seems to be the work of Mr Lukashenka’s multiple security services, who staged a provocation on election night, smashing a few windows in a government building and using it as a pretext for arrests. The opposition is also being implicitly blamed by Mr Lukashenka for a terrorist attack on the Minsk underground on April 11th which killed 14 people and injured 200. “Before the elections we had so much so-called democracy that it has made us nauseated,” Mr Lukashenka said.

What sickens most people, however, is Belarus’s deepening financial crisis. Unable to fulfil his populist promises to raise salaries and to borrow money from the West, Mr Lukashenka has been forced to devalue the currency. This not only wipes out people’s savings but also removes one of the pillars of his support: the older, rural population.

“Today Belarus is being threatened from abroad. A bitter information and political war is being waged against it,” Mr Lukashenka told his country during a May 9th parade marking the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. In fact, the European response to Mr Lukashenka’s thuggery has been feeble. The EU has re-imposed visa bans and targeted the personal accounts of government officials, but, unlike America, has not yet introduced wider economic sanctions.

Still, Mr Lukashenka’s usual tactic of trading political hostages for economic concessions has got him nowhere, as both the EU and America have demanded an unconditional release of political prisoners. José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, even refused to be in the same room as Mr Lukashenka during a recent commemoration of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

"I don’t want to talk about types like Barroso and other morons and assholes and the like,” said Mr Lukashenka in response. As Fedor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a journal, argues, by stepping up his repression Mr Lukashenka has destroyed his long-standing political tactic of playing Russia off against the West.

By isolating himself from the West, Mr Lukashenka has made himself ever more dependent on Russia, which has been dangling (though not releasing) a large credit line to Belarus. On one hand the Kremlin distrusts Mr Lukashenka because of his constant reneging on promises. On the other it needs him to keep Belarus away from the West. Now Moscow can afford to put pressure on Mr Lukashenka until he cedes control of state firms, including its refineries, and fully complies with the customs union between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which Moscow sees as an alternative to the EU.

In the past Mr Lukashenka often managed to outwit both Moscow and Brussels. This time he may have overplayed his hand. While he is prosecuting his opponents in Minsk, international human-rights lawyers are compiling a case against Mr Lukashenka. He may still be able to travel to Moscow, but his ultimate European destination may be an international tribunal in The Hague.

That person is none other than the foreign minister, Radek Sikorski (disclosure: an old friend of mine). In an interview last week in Gazeta Wyborcza (link in Polish) he complained about the way in which Polish newspapers allow anti-semitic and other grotesquely insulting comments on their websites, of a kind that they would never publish in print. He argued:

As the head of Polish diplomacy, it is my duty to safeguard my country’s image abroad. The racism, aggression and hate spouted in Polish internet chatrooms is beyond belief. People can read these comments anywhere in the world and form their opinion of Poland.

Mr Sikorski and his wife, the American Pulitzer-winning author Anne Applebaum, have been the butt of particularly venomous comments. One recent one read:

Do fiuta bez napletka hasbarowca, jak ci nasz kościołek przeszkadza to won do OSRAELA, mały icku, czy wiesz, że twoja babcia to rzydówka ubecka z domu Rojer, dwulicowe ścierwo, które dąży do rozkładu polski ...do gazu fraglesa". ty ch... sik-orski pejsaty kondonie

Which is simply too unpleasant to translate (maybe a reader with a strong stomach can try to render it in an appropriately illiterate and ranting tone). Another rather milder one merely accuses Mr Sikorski of being the "husband of an orthodox Jew, an enemy of Poland controlled by his father-in-law, bent on the “the destruction and destabilisation of Poland” and a "hidden, ruthless traitor". In December the minister forwarded these (and another one saying that Poles should finish off the Jews, the way Hitler started) to Poland's attorney-general, as a criminal complaint.

On Friday he appeared in court (link in English from Mr Sikorski's website) to give a deposition, complaining that the administrators of the sites concerned had not taken down the comments, despite being notified of their offensive content. He has also brought civil cases against two of the papers, Fakt (a hard-hitting tabloid) and Puls Biznesu (a business-news media outlet). He says:

My aim is to induce the owners of the sites to comply with the law and their own regulations. On top of removing the offending entries, this can be achieved by changing registration procedures on internet forums, for example by requiring users to provide a verifiable telephone number or other data that prevent anonymity from the administrator. I’m convinced their sense of anonymity goes a long way to encouraging users’ loutish behaviour on internet chatrooms.

The campaign has brought speedy results. The two papers concerned have taken down the offending comments and apologised unreservedly to Mr Sikorski. 

It is easy to snigger about thin-skinned politicians who can't take criticism. But in this case my sympathies are with the fox, not the hounds. Anonymous online comments are probably a good thing on balance—but they do require some sort of moderation. That costs time and money, but news media need to take responsibility for that, and not simply try to muster as many clicks as possible by allowing discussion to rage (literally) unchecked. If they don't, then a lawsuit is a good response.

Normal political life in Albania has been on hold for almost two years. In June 2009 Sali Berisha, the leader of the Democratic Party, won a narrow victory in the polls which enabled him to scrape together a governing coalition with his erstwhile foe Ilir Meta, who had broken away from the Socialist Party. However, Edi Rama, the mayor of Tirana and leader of the Socialists, claimed that Mr Berisha had stolen the election.

Ever since Albanian politics has rolled from crisis to crisis. The Socialists boycotted parliament for a while, hunger strikers camped outside Mr Berisha’s office and, most dramatically, on January 21st an opposition rally went dramatically wrong. Four people were killed when the Republican Guard, inside a government building, opened fire. The Socialists called murder; Mr Berisha said the protestors had been trying to launch a coup with guns disguised as umbrellas and pens.

In 2009 Albania joined NATO, and in December its citizens became members of the coveted club of people from non-EU countries who can travel inside Europe’s 25-member Schengen zone without a visa. So all this is pretty embarrassing for Albania. The political turmoil has damaged its EU accession process, and Brussels will be closely watching today's election proceedings.

If the coalition led by Mr Berisha does well, the prime minister may well decide to go for an early general election. That, says Mr Rakipi, would be “a moral and political victory over the opposition’s claims of vote-rigging” in 2009. But if the Socialist-led coalition does well that would bolster it in its own demand for early elections.

The key battleground is Tirana. Here Mr Rama is seeking a fourth term as mayor. He is opposed by one Lulzim Basha, a close aide to Mr Berisha and his family who has held various ministerial posts, including foreign affairs, transport and telecommunications and the interior. In 2007 he was investigated for corruption; the case was dropped in 2009.

According to Mr Rakipi, what Albania needs is a clear-cut victory by one side or the other. Otherwise, he says, “we will continue to live under the tyranny of the status quo that we have seen in the past two years.”

Mr Berisha is more phlegmatic. In an interview (in French) in Le Monde he says victory would be “very good” but defeat would not be fatal. Asked about Albania’s EU accession process, he replies:

The process is unstoppable, but it must be entirely based on merit, not on a climate. Now the climate is not so warm with regard to enlargement, even without any blockage. 86% of Albanians are for integration. I find them very wise. For a small nation like mine, the European Union is almost a heaven on earth. Every step we take favours freedom, living conditions and income. Imagine: Twenty years ago we had 60,000 bunkers in Albania. Now there are 60,000 villas!

On Friday, Mr Rama told an election rally that “Sali [Berisha] is not the prime minister of Albania, but only the representative of a government turned into a regime, who talks about you but only thinks of himself.”

Mr Rakipi is surely right that it is important to end the stalemate. But that may not happen today. Will Albanians believe what they have been promised, by both sides—pledges that include everything from building trams to tax cuts to creating 300,000 new jobs? Probably not, although Albanians, of all the people in the western Balkans, are by far the most optimistic. Let’s hope today’s battle of Stalingrad ends without casualties and breaks the country’s political deadlock.

(Photo credit: Tim Judah)

A week after the invasion, a colonel arrived from the southern Hungarian city of Szeged:

He asked us for a list of the people that had been executed. We told him nobody had been executed and he demanded that 24 people be executed immediately, just to show the power of the Gendarmerie. There were 300 people being held under arrest in the cellars under the army headquarters—people were denouncing each other all the time. They took two lots of 12 people and marched them to the banks of the Tisza river.

The colonel told Mr Dornbach to pick up a rifle and join the firing squad. He refused. Saying no would normally bring a severe punishment, but he deftly turned military discipline back on itself.

He told me to take a gun but I told him I did not have a weapon. I did not even have a pistol. I told him that was not my job. I had my orders to do my work, and I told him: “Here are my orders and my job is to follow them”.

It worked, and he was excused. Decades later, Mr Dornbach still remembered the sounds of the shooting as the bodies toppled into the Tisza.

Of course I heard the shooting. When the second group was taken to the river bank one of them jumped into the water and the soldiers started shooting at him as well. The Germans were firing as well from the other river bank.

Mr Dornbach suffered no penalty for his defiance, but he admitted it would have been different if he had been a normal enlisted man, rather than a company clerk.

I could not have said no because then I would also have been executed. But I would have shot over their heads. Nobody would have been able to tell.

Sandor Képíró followed orders. Gyula Dornbach refused them. Even in war, there are always choices.

The regime has form here. Between 2003 and 2005, "colour" revolutions ushered in new governments in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Seen from Baku, the lesson was clear: nip demonstrations in the bud. Protestors paid the price: one young activist was handed seven years in prison; another was given five. As the International Crisis Group argued [PDF] last year, this is part of a broader strategy to crush dissent and maintain control.

Take media freedom. April 20^th marked the fourth anniversary of the conviction of Eynulla Fatuyallev, a journalist, on a range of trumped-up charges. A year ago the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Azerbaijani government to release him. But the authorities have ignored that ruling, part of a broader climate of intimidation that causes journalists to censor themselves rather than invoke the government’s wrath.

On a political level, too, the government has consolidated its position in recent years. Reforms in June 2010 reduced the parliament to a rubber-stamp for the executive. In March 2009, the authorities won a hastily organised referendum proposing the abolition of presidential term limits. The incumbent, 49-year-old Ilham Aliev, is likely to win the election next year. He could stay in power for decades.

Foreign pressure can make a difference. International pressure forced the release late last year of two young activists convicted on trumped-up charges. But by and large, the international response to Baku's clampdowns has been toothless. The Council of Europe has failed to match its words with sanctions. With bigger issues at stake, such as energy supply to Europe, transit routes for US troops in Afghanistan and resolution of the dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, diplomats pull their punches.

Are the demonstrators doomed to fail? Azerbaijanis have gained a lot under Mr Aliev’s regime. Huge oil revenues have led to a flurry of infrastructure and reconstruction projects. Social-welfare payments trebled between 2006 and 2010. Living standards, by the World Bank’s assessment, have improved considerably. The president enjoys high approval ratings, and not only in government-sponsored polls.

Yet the president has appeared sufficiently rattled by uprisings elsewhere to launch a public relations counter-offensive. He has stepped up television appearances, and announced a flurry of new initiatives, including a high-profile anti-corruption drive.

Azerbaijan is ranked 134 in Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, tied with such luminaries as Zimbabwe. Corruption and patronage dominate public life. Some critics have dismissed the government’s efforts as window-dressing. But others have been surprised at the success of measures designed to prevent traffic police and customs officials from taking bribes.

The country faces another problem. Oil revenues account for 55% of GDP, but they will not last forever. Production has already peaked, according to some estimates, and reserves may run out as early as 2028. The non-oil sector needs much more attention. The government will struggle to maintain the largesse to which the public has grown accustomed.

A recent report from the European Stability Initiative strikes a cautiously optimistic note. A new generation of foreign-educated leaders is behind the recent wave of demonstrations. They expect more from their leaders than handouts and stability. As elsewhere, social media enable them to reach fellow citizens (although few outside of Baku are online).

Azerbaijan is unlikely to follow the examples of Egypt and Tunisia, just as it failed to replicate those of Georgia and Ukraine. A better comparison, the ESI suggests, may be with eastern European countries in the 1970s. As described by Timothy Garton Ash, they were like a frozen lake: unmoving on top, but full of activity beneath the surface.

For now, President Aliev and his cronies derive too many benefits to enact the kind of radical reform the country needs. But they cannot carry on like this forever.

But Wikileaks has given us a flavour of the American embassy's reporting to Foggy Bottom on the vexed subject of Bulgaria's media. It could be a clever fake by Bulgaria's enemies (or America's) but it rings true. The analysis is as punchy as the prose. If the diplomat responsible ever wants a job in journalism, this is a fine piece to submit to a prospective employer.

Here's the summary:

Bulgarian media is highly manipulated and  increasingly concentrated in fewer hands.  Reporters and  editors accept bribes to cover stories, to print propaganda  articles as though they were news, and to not print  information that sponsors do not approve.  The media's  cooption obviously limits its ability to serve as a voice for  civil society.  With elections for the national parliament  around the corner, the consequences of concentrated media  ownership and corrupt journalism are already on full display.  Though some independent outlets are surviving, the public  has largely lost faith in mainstream media and is turning totabloids for diversion.

It continues

media outlets, many cannot survive on advertisement revenues alone and are reliant on donors.  The new local private media owners, who unlike their predecessors have no journalistic background, use the media to influence the public and promote their business interests through the selected release of information and targeted attacks.

Among other gems: 

Local media outlets regularly practice self-censorship and even have black lists of politicians and rival businessmen that are neither interviewed nor covered.

And:

journalists say that political parties pay reporters, editors, and TV producers for interviews and news coverage, which appears without any financial disclosure.

If I were an American taxpayer, I would be glad to see my money being well-spent on this sort of diplomacy, rather than dreary cocktail-swigging. As a European, I worry that black money in the media is the weakest point in democracy (as we pointed out recently). And I also worry that it takes an American to put it in the headlines, albeit involuntarily.

Having spent many years in the service of his native America, his most recent posting was at the German Marshall Fund, where he masterminded the Brussels Forum annual shindig, and a raft of other meetings, public and private, that knit together the disparate personal and political agendas of people in dozens of countries. He was the moving spirit behind a letter in 2009 from central and east European leaders in to the Obama administration that chided it for neglecting America's allies in the region. He robustly defended that initiative against predictable charges of russophobia.

This Polish-language obituary has clips of him talking in English quite recently about missile defence and other security issues. He is survived by his wife, Barbara and his son Erik. You can hear him debating (alongside me and against pro-Kremlin speakers) here (52mins from the start). The Marshall Fund's obituary adds more details.

I worry that his passing marks the passing of an age. He epitomised the generous-spirited and ambitious sentiments that won the cold war and rebuilt Europe on the rubble of the evil empire. Things seem more mean-spirited now.

The answer? Four Balkan royal families will be in attendance; two will not. All the Balkan countries are republics, of course, but their royals live on, travelling the cocktail circuit and providing fuel for gossip-mongerers and readers of glossy magazines. Balkan Insight carries a full report here.

The Windsors have always had close ties to the Balkan royals. The husband of the current Queen (and grandfather of Prince William) was born in Corfu as Prince Philip of Greece, and had to renounce his Orthodox Christianity for Anglicanism when he married the then Princess Elizabeth.

Romania’s former King Michael, a 90-year-old great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria, will be at Westminster tomorrow. A third cousin of the Queen, he met his wife Anne in November 1947 at Elizabeth's wedding to Prince Philip. He then returned home, only to be forced to abdicate by the communists a month later. He has spent most of his life in exile in Switzerland, but put in a stint as a chicken farmer in Britain.

Bulgaria’s King Simeon, another distant relation of the Queen, has received an invitation, although his links with Britain and its royals are weaker than some of his fellow Balkan invitees. Simeon lived much of his life in exile in Spain but, from 2001 to 2005, was Bulgaria's elected prime minister.

Prince William's nuptials will also be watched by his godfather Constantine, a former King of Greece and a cousin to Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne. Constantine was forced into exile in 1967 and lives in London.

Constantine was best man at the 1985 London wedding of the now Serbian Crown Princess Katherine, who is Greek, and Serbia’s Crown Prince Alexander. Both will be in London for the wedding tomorrow.

Alexander, who has moved back to Serbia from his exile in London, is a godson of the Queen, whom he calls Lizzie in private. Famously, he was born in 1945, in Room 212 of London’s luxury Claridge's Hotel. But Yugoslav law required that he had to be born on Yugoslav soil in order to become king. Luckily, as the family were in exile in London, Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, declared the room Yugoslav territory for the day. (The picture above shows a young Alexander with his father.)

The newborn was taken to Westminster Abbey, where he was baptised by Patriarch Gavrilo of Serbia, with Britain’s King George Vl and Princess Elizabeth in attendance. Educated in Britain and the US, Crown Prince Alexander served in the British army and speaks with a pronounced upper-class English accent. A recent BBC report about the Serbian royals includes footage from his baptism.

Unlike the Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek monarchies, which have Germanic roots, the Serbian one was home-grown. The father of the Serbian Karadjordjevic dynasty was Black George, a pig breeder who led the first Serbian uprising against the Ottomans in 1804. The Serbian royal family’s website has some helpful family trees which show their relations to the other royal families of Europe.

The Albanian royal family have not been invited to tomorrow's ceremony. Zog, Albania’s first and only king in modern times, ruled between 1928 and 1939. His son Leka was born two days before the family was forced into exile in 1939, when the country was invaded by Mussolini’s forces. He spent time in Britain, including a stint in the Ritz Hotel.

Then the family moved to Egypt at the invitation of King Farouk, a descendant of the founder of modern Egypt, Muhammed Ali Pasha, an Albanian born in Kavala, which is now in Greece. Leka later became a British army officer, but lived much of his life in South Africa before returning to live in Tirana.

The Montenegrin royals likewise have not made the guest list, perhaps because Crown Prince Nikola Petrovic ll Njegos, who has lived all his life in France, has no obvious British connections. He is the great-grandson of King Nikola, who was deposed in 1918 when Montenegro became part of Yugoslavia and the Karadjordjevics of Serbia assumed the monarchy of the whole country. Nikola was once known as the father-in-law of Europe, with daughters married, most prominently, into the Italian and Russian royal families.

Most of the Balkan royals are, perhaps unsurpsiringly, in favour of a restoration of their monarchies. The subject was debated in Albania, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria after the fall of communism, but the moment for restoration appears to have passed. Still, for at least some Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians and Greeks, the presence of "their" royals in Westminster Abbey tomorrow will be a source of pride, and above all a delicious poke in the eye to any of their neighbours represented by mere ambassadors.

Even in the dark days of 2009 liquidity was no problem. In fact the big Czech banks today have too much of it chasing too few loans - “our biggest problem,” says Mr Kavánek. Luckily, not too much of that excess found its way into complex collateralised debt obligations or the dodgier euro-zone government bonds.

How come these Czech banks are sitting so pretty? They are simple animals which make retail and commercial loans to Czech customers. Their regulator the Czech National Bank (CNB) made sure that even at the height of the global financial crisis their parents did not raid their deposit-base. The Czech economy is the closest of the central Europeans to Germany: 36% of its exports go there, mostly in the form of automotive and electronic components to be re-exported to China, the rest of Asia and Brazil. So demand never slackened much even during the crisis in Europe. And there was no local real-estate bubble to speak of: by good luck rather than judgment, aggressive property lending only began to get going in 2008.

By another stroke of luck the Czech Republic is outside the euro zone - President Václav Klaus is a renowned eurosceptic – and so not infected by the zone’s credit concerns. It funds itself more cheaply than Italy. The big banks can borrow in the market at less than one percentage point above the CNB’s base rate of 0.75%.

Surely there is a downside to this banking paradise. There are public murmurs that the banks are too profitable, with their 20% return on equity, at the expense of  consumers, small companies and taxpayers. But a banking tax, such as those imposed in Hungary, Austria and Britain, is unlikely under the present government. Pavel Kysilka, chief executive of Česká spořitelna, who was a central banker during the last bank rescue, reckons a robust system is worth paying for.

What might knock the Czech banks off their perch and spoil Mr Kavánek’s bonhomie? A recession in the world’s car industry perhaps, or two consecutive years of negative GDP growth of around 6%, which the CNB’s stress test on banks indicates they would survive, but only by raising more capital.

I HAD sentimentally imagined that the Belgrade-Sarajevo train would prove a rich source of colour and interviews. No such luck. The journey turned out to be long and boring. But that is the thing about journalism. The only way to find out if your expectations are right is to get out there and check for yourself. In this case mine were way off, but that did not mean there was no story. It just meant it was a different one.

Train 451 leaves Belgrade’s tatty station every morning at 8.15. The design of the old Yugoslav railway network means that the route to Sarajevo is meandering: the train travels first to Vinkovci, in eastern Slavonia, Croatia, before heading south to Bosnia. The link was cut at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars in 1991—Vinkovci was a front-line town and was shelled by the Serbs—and not re-established in December 2009.

The daily flight between Belgrade and Sarajevo takes 45 minutes to cover the 200-odd kilometres; it would be quicker in a plane that was not propellor-powered. The bus takes about six hours, a car less (with the added bonus that the road route traverses the beautiful Drina valley). But by train you arrive in Sarajevo at 5:35pm, almost nine and a half hours after departing Belgrade. That's roughly the time of a flight between London to Beijing—which is why hardly anyone takes this train.

Actually, that is not fair. People do take it, but for local trips, hopping on and off along the way. I asked a Croat who embarked in central Bosnia why he was travelling by train rather than bus, hoping he might have something interesting to say. He replied that he had a back problem and that on the train he had more space.

Much of the track and rolling stock feel like they belong to a past era. But the real reason for the sluggishness has to do with borders and bureaucracy. Here's how it works. A couple of hours after leaving Belgrade you get to the town of Sremska Mitrovica, where three things happen. First, Serbian police check your passport and identity card. Second, Serbian customs officials examine the train. Third, Serbian railwaymen uncouple the Serbian locomotive so that their Croatian counterparts can replace it with their own, in order to haul the train’s two miserable carriages over the border into Croatia.

Seven minutes later the train stops in Tovarnik, where Croatian police get on to check passports and identity cards again, with Croatian customs officers following behind. An hour later, next to the border with the Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb bit of Bosnia, Croatian police and customs officers repeat their checks, and Croatian railwaymen uncouple their locomotive and one from the RS is shunted up to replace it. The train trundles over the Sava river into the RS and Bosnia.

By now the pattern has become familiar. A few minutes later it is the turn of Bosnian police and customs officers to check passengers and the train. Two hours later we pull into Doboj, in the Bosniak-Croat Federation part of Bosnia (thanks: Blagodarim in the comments) close to the line that divides the RS from the Bosniak-Croat Federation part of Bosnia. There can be no question of an RS locomotive taking this train to Sarajevo, so it is duly uncoupled and one from Federation Railways shunted into place. Finally, three hours later, the train draws into Sarajevo’s cavernous, utterly empty station.

The railway tells a story about regional co-operation in the former Yugoslavia. It exists, it works, but my goodness it could work a lot better. Last September I wrote that the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes had founded a new cargo company to speed up the transportation of cargo along the railway from Slovenia through to Istanbul. Infrastructure was not the problem, I was told. It was the constant stopping and starting, which slowed the trains so much that they became economically unviable.

I don’t know how long will it be before all of the countries of the former Yugoslavia belong to the European Union and are hence reunited as an economic space. But I do know that it might pay for someone to realise that if bureaucratic barriers can be brought down in order to speed up trade, business and travel, even if people are still not able to travel as fast as they deserve to in Europe in 2011, at least they would be able to travel like it was 1991.